the world's merciless (but baby it was real and we were the best)
by the ocean weekender
Summary: One by one, down they go into that soft night. Even superheroes aren't immortal. title based off this picture:


I.

Surprisingly, Chin is the first to go (well, technically it's Duke _**but)**_ **.** He doesn't even make it to the idea of retirement, and Danny jokes that he took Steve's place a lot later. A _**lot**_ later.

Ironically- if that's the word Steve's looking for- for once it's the fall that does it.

Danny had been there, like he'd ever forget, and he hadn't known what was happening. Something had been _**off**_ all day and watching Chin crumple into a too-small heap had been the switch that sent him haring out of his office, stomach turning at the blood matting the hair now speckled with grey from where it smacked into the computer table. He had called 911, of course he had, then immediately after Kono and Steve and Lou and gone with him in the ambulance to the hospital.

" _Very rare,"_ the nurses and doctors all intoned sympathetically two days later and left a weeping Kono to be comforted by the remaining team members.

" _It's amazing, isn't it?"_ Danny asked Steve later. _"Well- not_ _ **amazing**_ _, but- if he'd only been standing a foot or so different, in any direction….he'd still be here and we wouldn't be like this."_

So Chin goes first. Maybe it's actually all to spite the little nagging voice in Steve's head that used to whisper he'd be the first, dying in the line of duty and never reaching retirement.

II.

Kona gets to retirement. Barely. One week before she planned to go and she and Adam are extinguished in a horrific car crash, dead before paramedics are even informed of what happened.

At the funeral, it seems as if the whole island turns up. Steve- now relegated to a desk job and strangely not fighting it… too much- even spots some mutual relatives of Chin's. Those who had been happy to shove Kono into the ranks of the estranged extended family simply for associating with the dirty member and who she hadn't talked to even at his funeral.

" _Down goes another one,"_ Danny murmurs regretfully into his whiskey before shoving it into the air in a toast.

Steve raises his own glass to meet the other with a _clink_ and says nothing. There's nothing he _**can**_ say to make it better or turn back that treacherous clock. Nothing will stop Kono and Adam getting in that car, or joining 5-0 in the first place, or supporting her cousin when the rest of the family disgraced him, or even just joining the police force in the first place all those years ago.

Nothing will stop any of that happening, and Steve doesn't want there to be because 5-0 was some of the best if even some of the worst times of his life and he doesn't want to forget it, any of it, even if he's forgetting already.

He can't remember the design of Chin's most horrendous floral shirt, or the way Kono's eyes crinkled when she smiled.

So Kono and Adam are the second to go.

III.

Lou is third- the first to make it to retirement; Steve is ploughing diligently through his desk job with Danny at the next desk bitching but staying until Steve does.

Lou dies of old age- _**old age**_ of all things. Guns and criminals and police car chases and bullets and shoot outs and he dies of complications from _**old age**_.

It's Goddamn hilarious except it's not, it's really, really not and Danny can read it in his lines and the way he stands a bit more hunched than usual nowadays. Danny knows him. Of course Danny knows him.

Lou has a cremation instead of a funeral and his wife takes the next plane after to go to Chicago to scatter the ashes- Steve can't blame her, wakes can be a bitch of a thing to navigate when you're bogged down in grief and need to wallow.

Yeah, Steve definitely can't blame her.

Danny doesn't have a solemn though poignant quip to make this time, his words diminishing alongside their numbers.

So Lou goes too.

IV.

Jerry and Max and Catherine drop away sometime after, leaving just Danny and Steve because it always is, even though they're retired and married now and Grace has given them grandchildren.

" _Christ, today's television programmes are absolutely ridiculous- I mean look at that! It's stupid and it's dumb and it's dangerous!"_ Steve huffs out with a scowl. _"And- look! Just look at that, Danny!"_

The returning silence does him no favours and he looks over to see Danny fast asleep, glasses lopsided and mouth just a bit open. Except…

His chest is still and he isn't snoring and Steve is lunging for the phone before he quite connects what's happening, because- shit, Danny isn't _**breathing**_.

An ambulance is called, Steve is no longer strong enough to move his partner from the couch to the floor and he would curse but he's too busy holding his hand and the other clutching the phone.

Shit, shit, _**shit**_.

Danny is the fourth to go; dead shortly after the ambulance arrives at the hospital.

Steve is the only one left.

V.

Steve is the only one left, and he appreciates the irony.

Two years later, he is relegated to a nursing home and (surprisingly) he hasn't got it in him to protest. Danny would have laughed at that and said something about him mellowing him in his old age.

Danny isn't here.

Neither is Chin or Kono or Lou or anyone.

Steve is the only one left.

Steve cracks his eyes open, takes in the ceiling of his room, the pale sun coming in the window.

 _ **Only one left.**_

He closes his eyes again and goes back to sleep.


End file.
